Cats
My Babies, all Four of Them
If you have animals, you’ve got kids. Even if your pet is a tortoise older even than you are, these are the folks who depend on you no matter how old you get. My animal kids all have four legs. Although, we do have a parakeet with two legs.
Most of my cats are now entering their mature years. They’ve slowed down somewhat and get as much enjoyment out of their naps as I do. But cats at any age will love a good cat nap, so maybe thinking mine do a lot more of that than when they were youngsters might be a mis-memory on my part. That’s a new word, by the way: mis-memory. I propose that it means it’s not a bad or wrong memory. It’s just I might not be remembering it correctly. I don’t know if it’s a thing or not. I’ll have to see as time goes by if I have any more of them.
That’s what I like about being a writer. You can make up words. In our house, we make up acronyms. We’ve been doing it since my husband said to me, “I love you this many,” and wiggled his fingers at me madly. When written, it is ILY with tons of dots all around. Each dot represents once. When you are wiggling your fingers madly, too fast for the human eye to see, that’s a lot. Or you could say ILYTM. I love you this many.
Anyway, back to the cats. Our cats tend to change what they like to eat. It used to be that they loved chunks and gravy; the more gravy, the better. These days, they’ve gone back to preferring pate.
They especially like it when it’s mounded up in the center of their bowls. So, at the beginning of the meal, they smoosh their little faces into their meals and eat away until the middle is licked clean. Then they all sit back and look at me as if I’m still in the kitchen as if to say, “Well?” That’s when I mound up the outer edges back into the center of the bowls and set them down again. It’s like getting seconds. Molly, our overweight cat, tends to vacuum up her portion and move over to the next cat’s bowl edging them out, or sits next to her sibling, staring great holes into her sister’s or her brother’s bowl while they are still eating.
I announce mealtimes by banging their empty metal bowls together. Each has its own pitch. Clang, clang, CLANG, Clang. It’s actually very satisfying. I can remember they used to ring the dinner bell on Western movies and television shows. It was always a large metal triangle, and whoever was ringing it could get in a good workout. Like Bolivar, the cook on Lonesome Dove said, “I’ll ring it if I want to.”
My cats were spending too much time frantically scratching, so I figured it was time to dose them all with some flea stuff. Surprisingly, it was the easiest time I had yet. In the past, they could tell Mommy was coming with some awful thing, and they telegraphed to all the other cats that something was up and they’d all better hide. This time, I approached them calmly and with the gentlest respect, and they let me empty the tubes at the base of their heads, on their necks far enough away from their tongues’ reach so they wouldn’t ingest the stuff. I watched them carefully, and nobody looked like they were getting sick, so it was a success. It’s been about a week, and they all seem happy and not scratching madly. I can really tell when it is time to treat them for fleas when the stinkers start jumping on me.
Another thing the vet showed me how to do is to remove tarter buildup on their teeth. This presupposes that you’ve got access to their teeth. Like trimming their claws, you need to play with their toes from an early age so you can get close enough with the special kitty nail trimmers. You can actually use your own nail clippers, but I’ve never been really good with them. Cats will naturally shed long claws by scratching on kitty scratching posts, your furniture, or the rug. That’s when I find every single stinking one of those sharp razor claws and step on them — just lying on the rug for everybody to see. My eyesight is bad, so I miss seeing them, but I sure as anything manage to step on them.
But removing tarter is problematic. I took an elderly cat to the vet one time and was told it would be $800 and a general anesthetic administered to clean her teeth. She turned out to have a bad tooth that needed removing, so we combined the jobs. During our initial consultation, the vet did show me how to peel back the cat’s lips, and with her thumbnail, she flicked off a prodigious piece of tarter. My baby’s gums were bleeding underneath. The same thing would happen to you if you had that much tarter. If you want a look, go scare up some YouTube videos. That will put the fear of not going to the dentist in your soul and encourage regular brushing, flossing, and water picking.
I can always tell when Amazon is making a delivery. The cats will lift their heads like little prairie dogs out on the plains. Then, with a wide-eyed look at me, flee to the outer reaches of the house. We call that the cat alarm. I don’t bother to look for them for another couple of hours. Generally, they look for closets to hide in. They might also go under the bed, which is well barricaded with my husband’s shoes. He doesn’t put them in his closet, perhaps because there is no room.